Despite the recession and financial woes of the country’s economy, wireless broadband internet deployments based on WiMax have reached 519 in 146 countries, including 95 Wimax networks deployed by 2G mobile operators.

FDD WiMax was accepted into the IMT-2000 family of standards and more than 50 companies endorsed the IEEE 802.16m IMT-Advanced candidate proposal for a future-proof roadmap.

To support IMT-Advanced and the WiMax Forum evolution of its technology roadmap, leading suppliers and operators this year expressed their commitment to build and trial WiMax Release 2 based on the IEEE 802.16m standard. These ecosystem backers included Alvarion, Beceem, Cisco, Clearwire, Huawei, Intel, KT, Motorola, Samsung, Sequands, UQC, Yota and ZTE.

The WiMax Forum also announced that in 2010 it will finalize its WiMax Release 2 specification in parallel with IEEE 802.16m and IMT-Advanced, ensuring that WiMax Release 2 networks and devices will remain backward compatible with legacy WiMax Release 1 based on IEEE 802.16e.

“Despite the global economy, WiMax is going strong in 2009,” said Ron Resnick, president and chairman of the WiMax Forum. “The WiMax Forum membership has continued to bring WiMax to new markets, certify devices and keep the spirit of delivering mobile Internet services to people throughout the world. We expect 2010 to bring new innovations to the WiMax ecosystem with completion of the IEEE 802.16m standard, commercialization of the global roaming program and new WiMax Forum programs to help bring certified devices to retail channels faster.”

In addition to an increase in the number of networks traced by WiMax, many of the already established WiMax networks continue to rapidly expand. A good example of such expansion includes the company Yota, which reached 250,000 active commercial users on its Russian network and passed the breakeven point with more than 2,300 subscribers added per day to its WiMax network. In April 2009, 65 product models from six vendors (Acer, Asus, Lenovo, MSI, Samsung, Toshiba) with WiMax embedded chipsets were introduced to the Russian market. In 2010, Yota expects to add a new GSM + Mobile WiMax phone supporting VoIP over WiMax.

WIreless Internet service provider Clearwire has reached over 555,000 subscribers, covering more than 30 million consumers in 34 markets and has an average revenue per user (ARPU) of nearly $40. Malaysia’s Packet One Networks, which recently celebrated its one year mark of operations in 2009, has reached 130,000 subscribers. Korean company KT and Japans UQ Communications, who cover more than half of their respective populations, offer services to consumers via more than 20 MVNO partners. Imagine launched its 4G Mobile WiMax network deployment to cover Ireland, which will also reduce the average cost of broadband and phone services by as much as 50 percent. Freedom4 received the green light to offer fully mobile WiMax services in the UK using its nationwide 3.6Hz spectrum, after regulator Ofcom granted the operator a license variation.

Equipment vendors have also seen tremendous growth in 2009. Motorola recently accounced that it shipped its 10,000th WiMax Access Point and one millionth WiMax CPE. In 2008, Huawei achieved a 200 percent increase in WiMax revenue and expects to achieve the same level of growth by the close of 2009. Alvarion now supplies more than 260 commercial network deployments in more than 100 countries. Intel launched notebooks with its embedded Wi-Fi/Wi-Max minicard solution in the U.S., Russia and Japan; these were embedded in 80 notebook models from a dozen of the world’s leading PC manufacturers. Those manufacturers already have a solid pipeline of new models underway incorporating Intel’s next generation Kilmer Peak module with tri-band radio support for global WiMax networks. Finally, Beceem Communications announced more than three million 4G WiMax terminal chipset shipments in 2009 alone.

The WiMax Forum has a number of initiatives planned for 2010 to continue the growth of WiMax worldwide. These initiatives include an updated WiMax Forum subscriber and POPS forecast in early 2010, certification of Mobile WiMax 2.3 GHz products, the launch of the Open Retail Certification Program, completion of the WiMax Forum Release 2 specs based on the new IEEE standard 802.16m, commercialization and deployment of the WiMax Forum global roaming program, and new bloggers and expanded features at www.WiMaxTimes.com

“In the tough economic climate of 2009, WiMax continued to make signifigant strides,” said Daryl Schoolar, principal analyst, wireless infrastructure at Current Analysis. “Operators such as Packet One, Yota, and Clearwire continued to expand their network footprints. Device form factors continued to improve, with more functionality and eye-pleasing packaging. I expect in 2010 not only will network deployment stories turn into subscriber stories, but we will see true commercial WiMax roaming between operators supported by multi-band devices.”